Ed Rampell

Ed Rampell is an LA-based film historian and critic, author of "Progressive Hollywood: A People’s Film History of the United States," and co-author of "The Hawaii Movie and Television Book." He has written for Variety, Television Quarterly, Cineaste, New Times L.A., and other publications. Rampell lived in Tahiti, Samoa, Hawaii, and Micronesia, reporting on the nuclear-free and independent Pacific and Hawaiian Sovereignty movements.

LATEST ARTICLES BY Ed Rampell

Arts

“Obama Spy Drama”: Big Bro’ O is watching you
March 25, 2014 By Ed Rampell
Obama Spy Drama has some of the funniest politics since W.C. Fields' Klopstokia in Million Dollar Legs and the Marx Brothers' Freedonia in Duck Soup.
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Arts

Oscars, shmoscars, here are the 2013 Progie film awards
March 11, 2014 By Ed Rampell
In an attempt to draw attention to films of social significance with progressive content, I developed The Progie Awards. A collective of international film writers nominates films and actors for these awards.
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Arts

“Stand-Off at HWY #37”: Mixed loyalties, motives in great Native drama
March 5, 2014 By Ed Rampell
Ramirez courageously unleashes the dogs of war and sets her characters on a collision course. And as they head for the brink, she struggles to rein them in.
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Arts

“Billy Budd”: sex, revolution and sea in jaw-dropping opera
March 4, 2014 By Ed Rampell
In 1888 Herman Melville began the philosophical novella Billy Budd. Perhaps one could say that composer Benjamin Britten and his librettists E.M. Forster and Eric Crozier "completed" it with their adaptation.
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Arts

Pan African Film Festival opens Feb. 6 in L.A.
February 10, 2014 By Ed Rampell
One of L.A.'s leading annual cinema showcases and the biggest and most prestigious Black-themed film festivals, will take place February 6-17.
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Arts

Not all “peace and love”: Bill, Joan and the Beat Generation
February 6, 2014 By Ed Rampell
The latest addition to the Beatnik canon is on the stage, in the form of Bill & Joan, world premiering at the Sacred Fools Theater in Los Angeles.
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U.S.

Marxist economist Richard Wolff draws overflow crowds
February 4, 2014 By Ed Rampell
They flocked to hear the unapologetically self-avowed "Marxian economist" who has long toiled in the obscurity of academia and left circles.
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Arts

“Day Trader”: wickedly clever play critiques capitalism
January 27, 2014 By Ed Rampell
Day Trader is sort of Sunset Blvd. meets Body Heat meets Wall Street, a modern morality play that will keep audiences on the edges of their seats.
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